Final Winter

Clep, Lucas and Rona head ‘upstairs’ (really it’s a long tube through the stone about 30ft long) to investigate. There’s a circular room with the tube leading down in the center. There are 7 hallways radiating off of the center room. Near the hole and facing each tunnel there is a set of footprints in the stone.

Back down in Cranky’s room, the door bursts open and 40-50 soldiers pour into the room and start turning over tables and searching for intruders. One spots Karvald in the forge, trying to hide behind an anvil and rush him. Smasher lives up to his namesake by squishing no few of them into pulp on the floor. Notified of the conflict below, Clep, Lucas and Rona abandon the investigation of the seven rooms above and join the fight. Karvald and Smasher lay about with clubs and axes while Pixia makes the troops run away. Rona big-bear-butt-bombs the tables, Lucas throws fireballs and Clep fills a few guys with arrows and a few more with a tanglefoot bag. Cranky spends the fight incredulously watching and sipping a beer in the back of the room.

The old man (Mr. Cranky) tells the party that his grandkids are Alexander and Mellisandra, both hslf-elves as well. As he is telling the party more information, there’s a knock on the door. Everyone but Karvald manages to hide well, but Karvald puts a pot on his head and stands in the middle of the forge area. Spotting this before the door opens, Clep throws the stinky invisibility cloak over him.

Bursting into the room are 6 10foot tall vine and flower type golems, other various soldiers and a large person that looks very much like Pyoters sister, Syria de Gaines. Syria corners Cranky and shouts at him that she knows intruders are here and that he’s going to help her find the party. After she puts hands on him and he nearly bounces her through the floor, he past-scrys all of what we’ve done, telling her about the flipped over stones outside and the sealed up Water Weird. Syria is incredibly pissed about the Water Weird and sends some people down to take care of it immediately. Cranky bullshits her into thinking that he can’t see much more due to all of the restrictions he’s under here, and she huffs off.

The party discusses ideas with Cranky to get his grandkids out and take out Cainan. Discussion of ideas are in the forum thread.

The party, deciding that they have gotten as far as they can on his guy’s help, leave him tied up in the basement and go back up the ladder in search of other floors. Thanks to Nick, they know they have to get to the other floors fast because there are guards, so they opt to make some distractions. 1: The incendiary privy trap Clep set earlier. 2: A swarm of bees in a hallway. 3. Stoneshaping the trapdoors so that they can’t be lifted.

Sadly, Smasher gets thoroughly stuck in the trapdoor up to floor three and the whole party nearly falls back through it trying to help him get up. Finally up, the party sees a long hallway with just two doors. One is labeled “Foundry” and the other is labeled “Growth”.

The “Growth” room is a huge cave full of farmland and trees. It smells of summer and the ceiling looks like one giant window, brightly lit as if it’s summer in a field. As Karvald is wandering around, he is hailed by some sort of scarecrow with a human head attached to it. After a brief conversation with it, Karvald discovers that the creature is somewhat sentient, but has no name. Attempting to be friendly, Karvard explains what a name is and why it’s important, then tells the creature that he will name it Jack. Karvald leaves Jack tending the farmland. Jack seems to be thinking very hard about the topic of a name.

The “Foundry” room is lined wall to wall with tables covered in any sort of mechanical project imaginable. There’s a forge in one corner and an alchemy lab in another. There’s a half-elf man on the far side of the room. Noticing Karvald, he suddenly peers closer and says that he can’t see the spells on him and knows he’s not from here. He says “Angelica, we have visitors!” and attacks Karvald. Angelica is some sort of stone golem, but she stands idly by. After the old man nearly fries Karvald with a lighting wand, the rest of the party attacks, but the old man vanishes. He reappears in the foundry area, serves some tea and asks Karvald if he wants to earn some money. He’s not happy being here, but he has some grandkids in the cult downstairs that he needs to see safe back in Sharn before he can leave. He thinks the party is finally the ones who can help him.

Rona removes disease on the poor kidnapped and mouthstuffed guy, then the rest of the party just to be sure no one else gets it. Lucas charms him and he says his name is Nick. He didn’t know about any disease, he says the druids heal all of them. He says there’s a war coming because no one’s living a natural life anymore and that this compound is a beginning for a new homeland once the war is over and everyone else has killed each other to death.

They’ve been here for four years, just hiding and preparing for the coming war. They tried to tell other city leaders, but no one would listen to them, so they left and came here.

The altar is a blood-binding ritual for all of them, done every 14 days and helps them all remain a family. They all come and bleed in a big pot and then all of them drink a little of it.

The party, thinking that there must be another way for 400+ people to enter the mountain, investigates the outside of the whole place, but they find nothing but windows. Going back up through the trapdoor, the party finds the training room now empty and the floor covered in a semi-magical moss that’s being tended by three men.

Investigating further, the party discovers a few bunking rooms, storage areas and a bath area. The table over the trap door is actually an altar, bloody from sacrifices it seems. The party finds no other entrance.

The party is nearly discovered by a random guy walking around, but they kidnap him, gag (Bruce: “I’m going to grab him and uh.. uh.. mouthstuff him!”) him and drag him back down the ladder under the table. After Lucas dispells magic on him, he is shown to have the dreaded ‘shadow’s kiss’ plauge.

The party leaves the corridors for the main hallway investigation and continues disarming traps, heading towards a glinting at the end of the hallway. After making it through dozens of traps, the party find Bounce at the end of the hallways, staring fixedly at a very large chair with stones set into it. Bounce does not wake when pushed over, wet or even cut a little. The large chair and the four stones the chair is sitting on are not dusty at all, but there’s a fine layer of dust everywhere else. After the party get a little too close in it’s inspection of the chair, the chair has had enough and eats Lucas.

Clep cleverly discovers that stabbing the stones set into the floor hurt the chair, so the party follows suit and dispatches the chair in short order. However, Bounce is still not waking up. After smashing all but one of the gems set into the chair, Bounce finally wakes and says that the eye pulled him in. Lucas decides that being eaten by a chair deserves some sort of recompense and pries off the last gem on the chair and stores it in Clep’s bag.

Clep opts to set a trap in the privy pit that will ignite the methane gasses, but does not trigger it.

The Immolth walks the party out of his cave. Using the freshly repaired carpet, they fly SW for 3+ hours and see a mountain with a castle. There is a triangle shaped door that looks big enough that frost giants may ave carved it. The party sees nothing while scouting, so they camp for the night. Upon waking, they set to getting in, which is more difficult than it seems until Clep discovers that simply flipping over the rocks with rune-traps on them disables the traps.

Once in, the party discovers a long hallway with two corridors off of it to either side. The long hallway is trapped. Bounce the blink dog tells Rona that he smells human poo and ‘something funny’. Taking the left tunnel, they run right into a gelatinous cube. After dispatching it, they discover the smelly underside of a long pit privy. Bounce says the hallway smells HORRIBLE, like death and poo and evil. He says he can’t stand to be around such a horrible smell and goes to scout elsewhere.

Heading to the second corridor, the party discovers (thanks to Lucas) that it’s inhabited by a Water Wierd. After the party seals up the source of it’s water, it vanishes, but it’s not dead, just really really pissed off. A search of the room reveals:
1: A pouch of gems hung from the ceiling (Clep retrieves)
2: Rockfall (Karvald finds some skeletonized dwarven legs under some boulders)
3: A hidden ladder on a stalagmite leading up into the ceiling with a trap door at the top. After some fussing and a very electrified Helanar, the trapdoor is opened and the party sees a room full of 400+ Humans, Dwarves and Elves, all training with weapons. There’s lots of dried blood around the table the trap door is under, and a lot of flat, dull grey auras in the room.

A thrown-together bunch of rag-tag adventurers living and working in Sharn run into one another through a series of improbable escapades. * A young woman needs help exploring part of Undersharn for relics. * An inventor is being blackmailed, and is willing to pay for help. * A call for help in the far-away Eldeen Reaches sends our would-be heroes up against an interplanar portal, with a dead city on the other side. * Three ancient weapons are stolen from Menethil University, and our heroes accept the commission to return them, eventually succeeding in just that. * An unprovoked assault on a dig site sponsored by Menethil University requires some investigation.

The site is in Undersharn, and has been ransacked and reburied by unknown people. While investigating, the PCs find a body sealed inside an enormous stone, with indications that necromantic magic was used, and that the person was buried alive. In search of more information, the PCs travel into Aundair, make contact with the Arcanix college and learn about dragon lines; lines of natural geomantic energy. On the return to Menethil University with the new information, the team is ambushed several times by a variety of foes, ranging from Karnathi undead to air elementals to hired mercenaries. Eventually the truth comes out that a druid named Cainan has been hiring assassins, mercenaries and monsters to attack various people and locations. Cross-referencing leads the PCs to believe that Cainan is attempting to influence the weather (and bring about an ice age) by using the dragon lines. Analysis of the attack locations leads the PCs to board a ship for Stormreach, hoping to interfere with the druid’s plans. At Stormreach, the PCs hire a native guide and head south, dealing with the threats of the giant continent on the way. Among the threats are drow hunters, rampaging hill giants, vicious wildlife and a haunted giant city made of obsidian. Eventually, the PCs encounter an organization called the Monks of Perdition, beings that take it upon themselves to stop “End-of-the-world” type threats. With assistance from the Monks, the PCs locate a fort being used by Cainan and the Children of Winter, and plan an assault on it. A short side-trip later (necessary to destroy a cursed item), the PCs return to find that the Monks have been eradicated by Cainan’s forces. Our heroes continue with their plan, and counter-attack, wrecking a fort and slaying several hundred of the Children. Divination spells lead the PCs further south, and into an enormous mountain that is apparently the last redoubt of the Children. Now, the heroes are within the Cainstone, trying desperately to avoid notice and seeking out Cainan for a last desperate battle.